- Settings and Features to Make Great Portraits
- Poring Over the Picture
- Automatic Portrait Mode
- Aperture Priority Mode
- Metering Modes for Portraits
- The AE-L (Auto Exposure Lock) Feature
- Focusing: The Eyes Have It
- Classic Black and White Portraits
- The Portrait Picture Control for Better Skin Tones
- Face Detection with Live View
- Portraits on the Move
- Tips for Shooting Better Portraits
- Frame the scene
- Chapter 6 Assignments
The Portrait Picture Control for Better Skin Tones
As long as we are talking about picture controls for portraits, there is another control on your D5500 that has been tuned specifically for this type of shooting. Oddly enough, it’s called Portrait. To set this control on your camera, simply follow the same directions as earlier, except this time select the Portrait (PT) control instead of Monochrome. There are also individual options for the Portrait control that, as with the Monochrome control, include sharpness and contrast. You can also change the saturation (how intense the colors will be) and the hue, which lets you change the skin tones (for example, from reddish to yellowish). I prefer brighter colors, so I like to boost the Saturation setting to +2 and leave everything else at the defaults. You won’t be able to use the same adjustments for everyone, especially when it comes to color tone, so do some experimenting to see what works best.